PUTIN SETS OUT PEACE TERMS FOR UKRAINE: Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed a cease-fire deal with Ukraine that would freeze in place gains made by Russian-backed separatists, setting the stage for the kind of partitioning Moscow has used to tame other neighbors. Mr. Putin said he and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko were “very close” on agreeing to a path for resolving the nearly five-month conflict, an announcement that has lifted European equities and boosted emerging-market currencies. His proposal includes an end to the rebel offensive, but also a pullback of Ukrainian troops—which would be a major concession for Kiev. Mr. Poroshenko said he supported Russia’s “readiness” to reach a resolution, but didn’t directly address the proposal for the pullback of Ukrainian forces, which has already stirred an outcry from some in his government. Paul Sonne and Gregory L. White report.

WSJ STORIES YOU SHOULDN’T MISSREPUBLICANS WOO WOMEN IN MIDTERM ADS: A new TV ad run by Republican Rep. Cory Gardner in Colorado advocates selling birth-control pills over the counter, part of a broader effort GOP candidates are making to cut into Democrats’ advantage among women at the polls. Women favored a Democratic-controlled Congress by 14 percentage points in the latest WSJ/NBC News poll. To turn that around, Republicans are also pushing back against the Democratic criticism that the GOP won’t support Democratic-backed equal-pay legislation. Beth Reinhard and Janet Hook report.

KANSAS DEMOCRAT WITHDRAWS FROM SENATE RACE:Chad Taylor, the Democratic candidate in Kansas’s Senate race, has withdrawn from the contest, leaving Republican Sen. Pat Roberts with a potentially formidable opponent in the independent candidate, Greg Orman. Mr. Taylor didn’t explain his departure, which came as one recent survey found him and Mr. Orman each drawing about a quarter of the vote. Mr. Roberts hasn’t topped 40% in recent surveys, suggesting that an opponent who can unify the opposition to the senator might be able to overtake him. Janet Hook and Mark Peters report.

HERE’S A LOOK AT THE DAY AHEAD
–THE PRESIDENT: President Obama along with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry are in Wales for the NATO leaders’ two-day summit, which opens today. There will be sessions on Afghanistan and Ukraine as well as a working dinner on security issues.

–FDA PANEL: An advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration begins a two-day meeting to discuss safety testing that should be required for active ingredients in sunscreens to be marketed over-the-counter in the U.S.

“Given Putin’s animus, nourished by his negligibly resisted success in Ukraine, he is more dangerous than the Islamic State,” writes George Will. He argues that U.S. participation in defense of the Baltic states should be unconditional while U.S. participation in protecting the Middle East from Islamic State militants “should be conditional on the regional powers putting their militaries where their mouths (sometimes) are in the fight against radical Islamists.”

Robin Wright, writing in The New Yorker, notes that NATOis going to respond to a trifecta of crises in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine by forming a small rapid response military force to deploy to hot spots. “But the spearhead may prove little more than a palliative, a way to make the assembled powers feel as if they have a mechanism in place in case something else happens,” she concludes.

Journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as the doctors who became infected with Ebola while treating patients in Africa, are the equivalent of the first responders after the 9/11 terror attacks, writes David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy, and their deaths have shown the “costs of our indifference and inaction to date” on the Syrian crisis and the Ebola virus outbreak. Both problems require “governments, international institutions and their leaders to act with something like the courage and humanity” of journalists and health-care workers who have lost lives.

In the WSJ’s Think Tank, Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel write that one decision NATO leaders shouldn’t formally embrace in their meeting this week is President Obama’s decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016: “NATO should not endorse this policy to preserve flexibility for the future,” they write.

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